28 July 2014 4:10 PM

Still Clueless in Gaza - Six Years Later

I’ll devote this post to general points about Gaza, many of them arising from letters I’ve received or points made here. First of all I’ll just dispose of a couple of comments that stand out.

John Edwards writes ‘When discussing Ukraine nobody talks about "the Slavs of the region" but Peter Hitchens still insists on referring to the Palestinians as "the Arabs of the region". Why are Palestinians, uniquely, denied their national identity and a link with a geographical place? Perhaps because someone else wants their land.’

***Even I, who argue that Ukraine does not properly exist as a sovereign nation, readily recognize that there is a Ukrainian language and culture . The trouble is,and I thought we had got past this by now, is that neither language nor culture is universal among the people in the current version of ‘Ukraine’, which has simply inherited the largely meaningless borders of Stalin’s and Khrushchev’s Ukrainian SSR (Soviet Socialist Republic). Many of the citizens of Ukraine, especially in the East, are to all intents and purposes Russian. Many are mixed, speak both languages and have family which is Ukrainian and family which is Russian. The only part of the country which is pretty much wholly Ukrainian is the far West, much of which used to be part of Austria Hungary and then of pre-1939 Poland.

The idea of a ‘Palestinian’ nationality is a propaganda invention of the 1960s and 1970s, which (amongst other things) cast Israel as a dominant majority overpowering an Arab minority. Until then, Israel had been seen (to its great propaganda advantage) as a tiny Jewish state surrounded by hundreds of millions of mainly Muslim, mainly Arab enemies.

But by separating the local Arabs into a ‘Palestinian’ nationality, this was overcome. David became Goliath and Goliath apparently shrank to become David. Leaving aside the lack of evidence of the use of the term ‘Palestinian’ by the Arabs themselves before about 1970, I have not heard of any notable distinction between the culture and language of Arabs in the West Bank and of the non-Bedouin Arabs in Jordan, both of whom are descendants of inhabitants of the original ‘Palestine’ mandate. On the other hand, I think the Arabs of Gaza probably have more in common, cuturally, with their Egyptian neighbours than they do with the Arabs of the West bank.

’Jim New’ writes : ‘Palestine was never in any shape, form or stretch of the imagination, a British Colony’

***This is an extraordinary statement. I would love to hear more of his justification for it. It is true that the official designation was a ‘Mandate’, but it had all the trappings and appurtenances of a colony and was governed as such by the Colonial Office. My father, a naval officer, was rather surprised, in 1936, to find himself in Haifa putting down Arab riots, when he was supposed to be patrolling the South Atlantic aboard HMS Ajax. If Mr ‘New’ had told him that Mandate Palestine wasn’t a colony in any shape, form or stretch of the imagination, I rather think my father would have laughed.

Anyway, now we’ve got past that, and I’ve duly infuriated any pro-Arab fanatics who read this blog, I must return to infuriating the pro-Israel fanatics. Oddly enough, they didn’t pay much attention to my last essay on this problem, back in December 2008. The internal politics of Israel were slightly different, but otherwise it was more or less exactly the same controversy.

Its central point could have been written today : ‘ Even though all the usual suspects, the Judophobes, the diplomats, the gullible liberals, say that what Israel is doing now in Gaza is wrong, it really is wrong.

My position, as a strong supporter of Israel in general, is that Israel's action is wrong morally and gravely mistaken politically. Attacks from the air always kill innocents. It is no good pleading that you regret such deaths, when you knew perfectly well that your actions were bound to cause them. This was equally true of our own adventures in Iraq and Serbia, and is true of American bombing in Afghanistan. Israel's moral position is seriously weakened by the deaths of these innocents, and also by the flanneling and evasion of its spokesmen over this.’

Now let me turn to a comment from ‘John Main’ , who asks : ‘The fate of Israel will not be decided in people’s minds by people like us watching TV. We watch TV all the time, we disagree with much that we see, but we are powerless to decide anything. Why should the fate of Israel be an exception to that rule?’

***The answer is actually very simple. Israel has from its beginnings depended on powerful sponsors in democtratic countries who are very much influenced by what people watch on TV, and what they make of it.

The original ‘National Home for the Jews’, (not a state as such) in Mandate or Colonial Palestine, existed under increasingly reluctant but actual British sponsorship, upheld and sustained by British imperial power. Arthur Balfour’s decision to make the declaration had been made at a very bad moment in the First World War, where it was thought that it would weaken Germany and Austro-Hungary (similar belies led to the Allies’ endorsement of Czechoslovak independence).

When Britain began to fear that Arab resistance to Jewish immigration threatened her standing among the Arabs in the entire Middle East, British support for the ‘National Home’ cooled very fast . I personally don’t think it misleading to say that many British officials in the 1920s and 1930 worked quite actively to encourage Arab opposition to the National Home. The (British) appointment of the committed anti-Zionist Haj Amin al Husseini as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, over the heads of the local Arab hierarchy, in 1921, might have been designed to undermine Balfour.

When Britain eventually pulled out of the Twice-Promised land in 1948, leaving behind an impossible contradictory mess caused by its own policies, it was only Harry Truman’s strong support for Israel which allowed its successful creation as a state (plus the temporary willingness of Czechoslovakia to provide arms). Without those sponsors, Israel would not have survived , and without American sponsorship it would not have survived the long and difficult period of economic hardship and constant danger which then began.

The importance of the sponsorship is not just military and economic, though of course these things matter hugely.

Israel’s very nature runs against much of the dogma of the modern world. Enemies of Israel describe it as a ‘racist’ state, an extraordinary and almost total inversion of the truth, which si that it is *A state born out of the racialism of others*.

To my amazement, there are still people in this world who think that being Jewish is about religion, a matter of individual choice like Baptism or Unitarianism, and even people who think that Judophobia arises out of religious quarrels.

The people who hate Jews ( and there is no reasoning with such people, who are in often in all other respects perfectly rational, and even charming or humorous, but in this matter quite beyond the edge of sanity) couldn’t care less about religion. It’s Jews they don’t like, and that’s that. Many Jews are atheists, or just non-religious. Neither the Tsarist Black Hundreds, nor Hitler, nor Vichy France, could have cared less about what people believed. It was their bloodlines they wanted to check on, not their religious opinions.

The single most blatant example of this will always be the late Edith Stein, a prominent Roman Catholic theologian and Carmelite nun, German born, who was vindictively dragged from her convent in the Netherlands in 1941, and hauled off to Auschwitz to be murdered, because she had Jewish blood. I do hope this is clear.

It is because people were prepared to do things like that, on logic of that kind, that Israel was founded – to be a place where people could go when other people wanted to kill them because of their blood.

So to say it is a racist state is not just a slander. It is the opposite of the truth. But, given the general unwillingness of the civilized liberal democracies to take in more than a very few rich prominent Jews (and a small number of children, cruelly separated from their doomed parents, on the famous Kindertransport), Israel was determined that it should be able to hold its doors open for the foreseeable future to all people in that position.

The scheme, though not exactly utopian, was certainly idealist, and had all the ruthlessness of idealism. We now know, mainly thanks to Israeli historians who refused to allow the truth to be buried any longer, that the birth of Israel was achieved at the expense of many thousands of innocent Arabs, driven from their homes.

This is horrible, but, as I’ve said before, the USA, Australia, the Caribbean, and many other modern countries arose out of similar brutal drivings out of existing populations. This sort of thing is not unique even in the 20th century, which saw similar horrors (though much greater in scale) in the ‘exchange of populations’ between Greece and Turkey in the 1920s, and in Eastern Europe and India during the Potsdam deportations and the Partition, in 1947 and 1948. My point here is that the other comparable actions are forgotten and nobody seeks to reopen them, and one must ask those who wish to reopen the 1948 expulsions why they ( and the UN) concentrate on these, and these alone – and why they don’t take the view generally held in Germany, Poland, the Czech and Slovak lands, East Prussia, India and Pakistan, that no good purpose would be served by reopening such a wound.

But in these complex and unlovely origins lies the increasingly widespread claim that Israel, like South Africa , is an ‘apartheid state’ and so not deserving of UN or US sponsorship. This is not confined to small and sordid corners. The former American President, the much-admired Jimmy Carter, has used the word ‘apartheid’ to describe Israeli action in the occupied West Bank.

This is not as bad as those who suggest that Israel’s actions are comparable with those of the Nazis. But it is surprising how powerfully this obviously false, rather dangerous and hysterical claim (There is not the slightest evidence that Israel has any sort of exterminationist policy towards non-Jews. I put this refutation as mildly as I possibly can) gains acceptance in the minds of those who have decided that Israel is an evil racial state.

Is probably more damaging, because it has gained acceptance well outside the ranks of the swivel-eyed and the hopelessly bigoted.

And it is because of its power and implications that Israel’s current policy in Gaza is so very dangerous.

I’ll come to that, but first I must deal with a claim repeatedly made by defenders of Israel’s attack on Gaza.

It is that in some way shelling and bombing Gaza ‘protects’ Israel from Hamas rockets.

But it simply doesn’t. Days of shelling have not stopped the rockets in the short term. Weeks of shelling will not stop them in the long term. Just as the 2008 shelling failed to stop the 2014 rocket attack, the 2014 shelling will not stop the next rocket attack from Gaza in – let me guess – 2017? Hamas will actually have gained both recruits and international support as a result of this week’s events, when it was losing both before them, and the Gaza Strip is not, and never will be so closed off that the making of rockets will be impossible.

I might also mention that Hamas’s rockets are inaccurate, carry small warheads (not to mention the fact that Israel has a seemingly effective anti-missile shield which deals with many of the Hamas rockets before they can hit their targets) and have, I’m glad to say, done remarkably little damage and killed and injured remarkably few people despite the length and extent of the bombardment. This is no comfort, I know, to those who have suffered – but on the other hand, there is absolutely no evidence that Israel’s attack on Gaza has prevented a single Hamas rocket from flying, or will do so in the future. To characterize this attack as defensive is just misleading.

I really don’t see why it’s so shocking to suggest that Israel would have done better to endure this attack. It’s often wiser not to be provoked. Franklin Roosevelt wouldn’t allow himself to be provoked by German attacks on US Navy ships (especially the Reuben James) during the undeclared convoy war from 1939 to 1941. Was he weak or wrong? I’m sure there are other instances of the strong not allowing themselves to be provoked by the weak into doing what the weak wanted them to do.

But the propaganda effect on Israel’s public standing, resulting from the scenes of civilian death in Gaza, is enormous and longstanding.

Readers here will know that I do not accept excuses from anybody for the killing of innocent civilians in bombing and shelling of populated areas. Only three generations ago such behaviour would rightly have been viewed with utter horror. Gazans I spoke to directly (who live in what is virtually a police state) were privately horrified when Hamas set up missile sites near their homes, but dared not protest. We cannot blame them, or view their death, injury and ruin as just punishment for their failure to protest – because in the same circumstances we too would not dare to protest.

But this is, as Talleyrand once said in another context, not just a crime. It is a mistake. Israel, back in 1967, had a huge credit balance in the propaganda war, not least in Europe where it has now almost wholly lost it. Bit by bit, it has let that drain away, relying increasingly on the reeking tube and iron shard of unrestrained force, its supporters given to macho statements about how they don’t care if no-one likes them, they will defend themselves. Support remains strong -for now -in the USA - but for how long can this endure unless Israel gets a *lot*more clever?

In modern diplomacy, small and unpopular countries have to have enough friends simply to stay alive.

As I say above, I absolutely reject the claimed parallel between Israel and apartheid South Africa.

But others do not. And their realistic and achievable aim (an aim, alas, much advanced by Israel’s crass flailing in the past two weeks) is to isolate Israel, diplomatically, economically and culturally, as South Africa was isolated, until all the weapons and tanks in the world cannot save it from the pressure form within and without, and from signing itself into non-existence through acceptance of a ‘right of return’ or a ‘one-state solution’, which would end the Jewish state for good. This is a very real danger. The USA is changing very fast, and it is time Israel's overconfident supporters understood just how fast.

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The fact that it was never an independent state in the modern form of a state that we understand today does not invalidate the existence of Palestinians. other independent states today were NEVER an independent entity of their own throughout history. If you would like to strip the Palestinians that right based on this weak notion, then prepare yourself to do so to many nations.

Palestinian nationalism has existed since 1914 when the Arabs revolted against the Ottomans with the promise of independence by us British. In 1916 and 1936 the Arabs revolted against the British because of increasingly pro-Zionist lobbying. Sorry Peter, but you've fallen into the Israeli leftist propaganda lie of "Palestinians were invented in the 60's."

Benny Morris got things wrong, or out of context, big things, slander basically. Israeli vets always seem to contradict these New Historians? I wonder why. The pressure Israel has to create an appeasement version of history in order to abate arab pride is huge.

>
And atheist Leftists who insist all Zionist admit that the creation of Israel was a sin. That way they can prove to themselves they are more moral than God.

Paul P "Norman Gary Finkelstein (born December 8, 1953) is an American political scientist, activist, professor and author."

Third one from the end, "activist". What is a pro Palestinian "activists" doing commenting on it? I think you will find Pappe was also an "activist" and so was Benny Morris, he said he wrote a version of history designed to ease arab pride just in time for the supposed final peace agreement at that time.

Benny Morris got things wrong, or out of context, big things, slander basically. Israeli vets always seem to contradict these New Historians? I wonder why. The pressure Israel has to create an appeasement version of history in order to abate arab pride is huge.

"A sustained effort has been made to discredit this revealing work, by the usual suspects'"

From Wikipedia...

"Although the book initially received a warm reception from mainstream critics, it would later be described as a "fraud" and "forgery" by a number of scholars and historians following an in-depth investigation and refutation of the book's central claims by Norman Finkelstein."

Of Norman Finkelstein....

"Norman Gary Finkelstein (born December 8, 1953) is an American political scientist, activist, professor and author. His primary fields of research are the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust, an interest motivated by the experiences of his parents who were Jewish Holocaust survivors. He is a graduate of Binghamton University and received his Ph.D in Political Science from Princeton University. He has held faculty positions at Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Hunter College, New York University, and, most recently, DePaul University, where he was an assistant professor from 2001 to 2007."

Of Joan Peters...

"Joan Peters (born 1938) is a former CBS news producer of documentaries......"

Posted by: Tanya Bowman | 30 July 2014 at 12:51 PM:
Israel is now using the tunnels as an excuse for their genocide.
Peter,Israel is worse than 1980s South Africa,much worse.If they are left to do what they want much longer they will soon be on a par with those military leaders from Rwanda and Yugoslavia of the 1990s.

I could try to post some interesting and illuminating facts on the "those military leaders from.... Yugoslavia of the 1990s" that could, but probably wouldn't, change your views.

I could also try to post some interesting and illuminating facts on the side issue of the mass exterminations in Rwanda carried out with nothing more lethal than an assortment of garden implements and kitchen utensils plus a few sharpened sticks in a country nearly at the bottom of the (Grauniad's!) gun ownership league tables.

But, despite him having touched on the "misinformation" in the Balkan Wars himself, and even written about the "misinformation" disseminated by the pro gun control lobby (though he subsequently felt forced to remove the chapter in the revised edition), he's loath to let too much light shine on the truth.

Conspiracy theorists might try to argue that even the great controversialist himself is only allowed to run so far off the leash before he's brought to heel.

Paul P " I don't think scholarship of this era is served by automatically and vigorously wiping Israel's slate clean at every hint of wrongdoing."

No of course not, but Morris and especially Pappe, were both writing for a reason, (to help facilitate a peace with the arabs), in which history would have to be re-written to appease their pride. So they set out with a presupposition, that means if Morris is faced with two narratives, he is going to pick the narrative and evidence that supports the presupposition he starts with. I have read my eye witness accounts to things Morris claims, which are very strong personal convictions by eyewitnesses that the new Historians are guilty of little more than Left wing slander.

This is ad hominem. It is not a rebuttal or a refutation of Pappe's finfings or of his interpretation of the events of 1948

>
If you gave me a few days I could rebut the main thrusts made by both and show you where Ilan Pappe lied, both of them set out with presupposition they sought to report. As for arab sources, they are meaningless because they lie. Dier Yassin was not as bad as either claimed.

My favourite is From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine by Joan Peters. A sustained effort has been made to discredit this revealing work, by the usual suspects. But the criticism cannot disprove the facts or substance of the central thesis of the book. Despite minor flaws, the truth uncovered by the author is unassailable. True, her polemical excursions are sometimes harsh and the book would have benefited from better editing but the flaws are ultimately of a stylistic, not factual, nature.

"Ilan Pappe has lost court cases based on his slanderous account of the birth of Israel, he is an extremist, a communist atheist with an axe to grind."

This is ad hominem. It is not a rebuttal or a refutation of Pappe's finfings or of his interpretation of the events of 1948. Much of what Pappe says in his 'Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine' is authenticated elsewhere in the literature of the era - the Deir Yassin massacre for example, at the hands of the Irgun and Stern Gang. I don't think scholarship of this era is served by automatically and vigorously wiping Israel's slate clean at every hint of wrongdoing. We all know there was plenty of inexcusable wrongdoing so there's no point in continually hiding it, much less denying it.

This is Wikipedia's entry for Benny Morris, sub headed Ilan Pappe...

"Benny Morris wrote a fiercely critical review of Ilan Pappé's book A History of Modern Palestine for The New Republic. Morris called Pappé's book "truly appalling". He says it subjugates history to political ideology, and "contains errors of a quantity and a quality that are not found in serious historiography". In his reply, Pappé accused Morris of using mainly Israeli sources, and disregarding Arab sources, which he cannot read. Pappé says Morris has held "racist views about the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular" since the late 1980s. He also attributed Morris's perceived rightward drift since the late 1980s to political opportunism."

Both these scholars are Jewish Israeli historians of substantial note and credibility, yet here we see them exchanging ad hominem as if that counts as rebuttal scholarship, and it only goes to highlight the need to be widely read of all sides in these contentious matters. I haven't yet read Morris' book so I can't comment on it. As soon as I have I will do so.

"My thanks to Mr. Hitchens. "1948" by Benny Morris is available on Amazon (I'll get to it eventually)."

The book has several mixed reviews on Amazon, the limited consensus being that Morris is pro-Zionist. I shall probably get it anyway.

From my my own shelves I plucked Christopher Sykes' Crossroads to Israel, 1917 - 1948, and Dan Kurzman's Genesis 1948: The First Arab - Israeli War. I can't remember if these books are any good because I read them twenty years ago, but the covers show glowing recommendations from the usual reviewers. I probably thought they were good at the time otherwise I'd have tossed them.

On the Palestinian side I have already mentioned Ilan Pappe's The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. This book was recommended to me by a Palestinian, an American citizen and living in America - my home for many years - but whose extended family still lives in a village in Israel. Given my fundamentally pro-Israeli bias our pub discussions often became quite heated, but we remain good friends.

Peter Hitchens writes, “We now know, mainly thanks to Israeli historians who refused to allow the truth to be buried any longer, that the birth of Israel was achieved at the expense of many thousands of innocent Arabs, driven from their homes.”

Peter Hitchens writes, “We now know, mainly thanks to Israeli historians who refused to allow the truth to be buried any longer, that the birth of Israel was achieved at the expense of many thousands of innocent Arabs, driven from their homes.”

Would Mr. Hitchens or someone else please cite on of these historians? I have been living for over a decade with the understanding that I received from American radio talk show host Michael Medved that the Arabs were not driven by Israelis from their homes in 1948 but that the invading Arab armies told them to leave and stay safely out of the way while they drove the hopelessly outnumbered Jews into the Mediterranean. That so many Arab families would actually vacate their homes because of that invitation always sounded like an amazing event for non-Biblical times to me, but I trusted Medved's history programmes.

The whole point of a Jewish state is that it is defensible land where Jews are a majority. That's Zionism. All Jewish settlers are Israeli citizens. There's no 'need' for any of them to live in the WB. they already have a country they can call home. Palestinians, on the other hand, do not. I repeat, if Israel wants to transfer its citizens to the WB, then it should give citizenship to all the WB's inhabitants.

I'm no specialist on blood other than its redness. But there are differences. I'm also of the opinion that dolphins have very similar DNA structure. Which proves or disproves nothing . Race explains far more. The important thing here is Jews know they are Jews Whether recent Khasars or Biblical Sepharic. Semites covers most of the middle east race, Arab and Biblical Jew.
The point being they on the whole hate each other. DNA or otherwise. So Paul P is as wrong as is J Gribben .and I as always speaks the truth.

Hamas wants war Hamas has war, war is terrible Hamas knows that, Hamas is on its last legs and is sacrificing the Arabs of Gaza for their cause, the pornocracy of death is being presented to us on an hourly basis. This is Hamas strategy and they know it furthers journalistic careers, These journalists are not that interested in saving the Arabs, no heart bleeding for the 170,000 dead Syrians. This war against jihad is going on all over the Middle East, Asia, and central Africa and will soon be here in Europe if it is not defeated, if you look at Paris you might think it is already here. You may also notice the complete silence from the Arab governments who art supporting Israel by this action, only Turkey and Qatar and Iran are supporting Jihad.

Ban ki-moon has condemned the Israel for the horrendous incident in which 16 have died. He has made no mention of the Jihadists of Hamas drawing fire, purposely drawing fire to the school by attacking Israeli soldiers from the school. It is apparently OK for Hamas to do this as no one seems to think this is of any relevance. Hamas draws fire to civilians for their propaganda machine of blood and gore pornocracy.

The people of Nazi Germany elected the Hitler and the Nazis knowing what they intended to do, the people of Germany suffered terribly because of this when they were eventually defeated. The Arabs of Gaza voted Hamas into power knowing that/because they promised to destroy Israel and kill the Jews, this is extreme Islamic doctrine, they thought they would be able to join in the spoils of war. The Gazan Arabs like the people of Nazi Germany made one big mistake and Hamas will be defeated.

Who are the zionist lobby? Honestreporting.com? I never managed to find them here in the UK and I spent the last 10 years defending Israel, usually alone, on AOL messageboards, Guardian blogs, here, outnumbered about 50-1 by hysterical extreme Left wing Israel haters.

Posted by: Tom | 31 July 2014 at 10:46 AM'

AOL? Does that even exist anymore?

I'm assuming you are American? Do the Israelis even want you defending them? They probably don't need it. They are tough people.

'by hysterical extreme Left wing Israel haters.'

And what's this nonsense? Historically Israel is steeped in the Left. Take another trip round the goldfish bowl.

What is clear is the outrageous reaction of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. On July 20, 2014 he said: “dozens more civilians, including children, have been killed in Israeli military strikes in the Shuja’iyya neighborhood in Gaza. I condemn this atrocious action. Israel must exercise maximum restraint and do far more to protect civilians.”

Ban Ki-moon said nothing about Hamas having failed to protect Palestinian civilians. He said nothing about Hamas having put Palestinian civilians directly in harm’s way. In fact he said nothing about any “atrocious action” by Hamas. He also made no demand that Hamas “restrain” itself from fulfilling its stated goal, namely, that “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.”

For the UN, no move that Israel makes short of surrender to the Palestinian mob, will ever be sufficient.

When Palestinian civilians did heed Israel’s warnings and did not die, on July 16, 2014 OCHA complained “the relocation experience has been…traumatic…Women have reported stress due to their inability to maintain…modesty norms…[in] overcrowded spaces...”

Five million Israelis have just seconds to run for a bomb shelter and save their lives. Older people have died from heart failure when the sirens go off. Small children flee rockets raining down on their kindergartens and spend hours trapped between four walls day after day. Let alone the parents and brothers and sisters of the 50,000 plus heroic young men and women on the front lines who spend every waking minute dreading a phone call, haunted by the prospect of kidnapping by very real monsters.

The truth is the UN doesn’t give a damn about the suffering of Israelis.

On July 18, 2014 the giant UN apparatus assembled in Geneva for the world press. There was OCHA, and the World Food Programme (WFP), the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, and the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA). Not one of these organizations said one word about Israelis.

This is not merely indifference; it is gross negligence and collaboration. On July 17, 2014 UNRWA confessed to “discovering” rockets in one of their schools, then refused to make the photographs public, and promptly gave the rockets back to the rocketeers – or as UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness delicately called them, “the local authorities.”

UNRWA had the audacity to claim “this incident is the first of its kind…” knowing full well that Hamas has directly involved UNRWA schools in its war crimes before – with video evidence over the past decade to prove it.

"For the purposes of this Law, 'Jew' means a person who was born of a Jewish mother or has become converted to Judaism and who is not a member of another religion."

The term "Jewish blood" is used popularly and synonymously with "Jewish race". There is no such thing as 'Jewish race'. The Jewish mother through which Jewish descent is traced can be of any race. There are Ethiopian mothers tracing Jewish descent, as are there Slavs, Western Europeans, and the original Semitic peoples. Jewishness is nationhood bound up with Judaism. It is anachronistic for sure and I can't for the moment call to mind any other modern ethnic grouping with the same characteristics. It might even be unique.

Sort of apropos and a bit contentious is Arthur Koestler's The Thirteenth Tribe. In this book, published in 1976 and now largely forgotten, Koestler traces the history of the ancient Khazar Empire, an Eastern European power which in the Dark Ages (around 800AD) converted to Judaism. It is from these people, Koestler argues through successive mass-migrations, pogroms and especially before the 'Mongol hoardes', that most of world Judaism issues. Yiddish, Koestler observes, moved from East to West. Thus the 'look' which most people associate with the appearance of Jewishness, and much popularised in literature and film, is Slavic in origin. The Khazars had little or nothing to do with the Semitic Jews of ancient Palestine. Nevertheless they are still Jews and their Jewishness traces via motherhood per hallowed Jewish tradition.

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